Seniors Take Manhattan

Debra Bruno is a freelance writer and editor. She is currently working on an e-book about her time in China, scheduled for publication by the Wall Street Journal.

The solutions in Minnesota have ranged from gas station signs in Cambridge that say, “Have you had your memory checked? See your doctor today” to training sessions in St. Paul to help business owners, law enforcement officers, librarians and others become more sensitive to those with cognitive impairment, she says.

Atlanta has also won notice for its programs. One of the biggest problems in the sprawling region is lack of transportation for seniors, says Mary Blumberg of the Atlanta Regional Commission. “Atlanta has terrible traffic problems, but it has some public transport,” she says. “In rural areas, there are no options.”

So Atlanta provides vouchers that seniors can use to buy public transportation or even give to a family or friend to compensate them for taking them to medical appointments or shopping. “They can choose how to use them,” Blumberg says.

The District of Columbia has used the New York model, says Gail Kohn, the coordinator for D.C.’s age-friendly program. D.C. has just finished its planning process and has designated 12 businesses age-friendly, she says.

On a national scale, AARP will launch a tool that will serve as both a scorecard and a nudge to cities: a livability index, with a special focus on aging residents, of course. The index, to be launched in April, will be the nation’s “first comprehensive livability index for every block across the country,” says Rodney Harrell, director of livable communities for AARP’s Public Policy Institute.

“For instance, it will look at access to grocery stores: how many of them are within a quarter mile of your house?” he says. Every ZIP code in the country will get its own score. On a scale of 0 to 100, the segments of each area will be rated on an average of seven themes, such as housing, transportation and health. People can also go in and rework the score based on services and characteristics that matter most to them. For instance, if housing doesn’t matter because you’re already comfortable where you live, you can exclude that factor, he says.

“The main lesson is that we need to plan for all ages and abilities and incomes,” Harrell says. “By doing that, aging needs aren’t in a box. And if we do that well, we will meet the needs of a large part of the community” and will have “communities that work for all people,” he says.

That lesson—that age-friendly is also moms-with-strollers-friendly and wheelchair-friendly and distracted-person-walking-down-the-street-with-his-eyes-on-his-iPhone-friendly—is one that comes up often.

Seniors stock up on groceries at the Covello senior center. | Mark Peterson/Redux

In fact, many scholars of aging say that it’s a mistake to imagine the needs of older adults as a separate issue.

“When we talk about aging services, it’s often been narrowly focused on Medicare, Medicaid and the Older Americans Act,” says Amanda Lehning, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Social Work, who has studied aging issues. “What’s really exciting now is that the aging-friendly community movement is really broadening the discussion about what kinds of things we should be doing so older adults can continue doing things they’ve done throughout their lives.”

“It’s beyond thinking of older adults as just a disability or cognitive decline,” she says.

Mildred Warner, a professor of city and regional planning at Cornell University, says many of the age-friendly initiatives are biased toward older adults, which misses a larger concept.

“We run the risk of missing an opportunity to use [age-friendly actions] to create cities that are good for growing,” she says. Her focus is on multigenerational planning. One example, she says, is re-imagining schools as community assets, or, as in New York, using school buses for seniors in the middle of the day.

“In our society, we’re divided by a lot. We need to create things to bring us together,” she says.

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This enthusiastic and life-affirming sense of aging does ignore some hard realities.

The truth is that aging is more than just a state of mind. Bodies wear out, and at some point nearly every human is going to need more than just a smooth sidewalk. Evelyn Granieri, chief of the Division of Geriatric Medicine and Aging at Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, says few people are talking about the oldest and most frail seniors. “They’re almost invisible,” she says.

In the medical establishment, geriatrics is lower than the lowest rung of prestige, and few medical schools devote much attention to the field. Last year, Granieri says, there were fewer than 100 geriatricians trained in the U.S.

At the same time, the number of frail older people is growing, and many are facing issues with dementia. “When you reach 85, there’s a 50 percent likelihood that you’re going to have some form of dementia,” she says. “And there’s almost nobody who’s 100 who is cognitively intact.” Part of the reason is that people are living longer with diseases like diabetes, which is connected to dementia, she says.

When the baby boomers age, the country will be in trouble, she says. “Dementia is real, pervasive, misunderstood and unattended to. It’s almost a pandemic,” Granieri says.

In the meantime, New York seems to be doing what it can to put resources in place for many of its aging residents. Older people “want to stay active and engaged in the community,” says the academy of medicine’s Boufford. “They want to give back. It’s this huge resource that’s wasted.”

Of course, older New Yorkers are New Yorkers first and older people second. They take pride is being New Yorkers.

Seniors from the Covello center take the bus to see a doo-wop concert on 125th street in Harlem. | Mark Peterson/Redux

Pacheco says she considered a relocation to Queens once, when she was younger. “But it was a long way for me” to get back to East Harlem, where the rest of her family lived. “There, I needed a car. Here, you don’t need a car.”

Dolly Acheson, 76, who has lived in New York her entire life, says her daughter would like her to move to Houston to be closer to her. “I went to an active senior living center in Houston,” says the retired telecommunications worker, over fruit smoothies at the Moonstruck Diner in midtown Manhattan. “Not my thing.”

Rosalind Yu, 73, who has lived in New York since 1970, says she has absolutely no idea whether New York is getting better for older residents. “When I was not old, I didn’t pay much attention,” she says. “But when I get old, I find everything is nice, easy and convenient.” One of her favorite activities is traveling from her home in Flushing, Queens, to shop around the city, including a green market at Union Square in Manhattan during the summer, a Greek supermarket to buy feta cheese and a Russian supermarket in Rego Park, Queens, for smoked salmon. “I just love to run around,” she says.

And Sheila Bellen warns visitors that she’s got a packed schedule. “Make sure,” she tells a reporter who wants to set up a meeting, “it’s not on a Thursday when I go to my tap class.”